American Anime

Rating: 6/10 (1 February 2014)

Pacific Rim is nothing else but an American version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The setting, the cities, even the wording (Kaiju, Jäger) point in that direction.
Monster-Techno-Anime as a real movie, in 3D. Fantastic.
However... The movie turns out to be an empty shell. The visuals are great, the general storyline is just fine. Japanese anime have this fantastic settings too, but they have the tendency to concentrate on the psychology and philosophy of the characters (see Neon Genesis Evangelion, Blue Submarine No 9, Akira, Ghost in the shell for example) This adds enormous depth too the films. Yes, I know, it sounds strange. But the Japanese demonstrate and proof that even a monster movie needs some depth.
This is missing in Pacific Rim. Only in the scenes with young Mako you get a sense of this. And these are actually the only moments where one gets any idea about the motivation of the characters.
So, in the end, I watched this beautiful looking movie, and constantly missed something more than just plain heroism. And hardly ever there was more.
Nice movie for fans, but not a good one.